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Thursday, August 4, 2011

Women in a (shoe)box?

People are always trying to explain behavior. Men try to understand women, women try to understand men, women try to understand women. Apparently we can only be defined by gender stereotypes, even by our own gender.

I'm so glad we can clear up all the goofy shit women do in 7 little bullet points. Because thousands of years of living with women, and men still haven't figured out things like why women take long to get ready, why our public bathrooms are gross, and why we smell nice.

Did I mention this was written by a woman?

I'm not sure where she's hanging out, but most women's restrooms aren't as bad as the men's because at least we don't pee on the floor, accidentally or on purpose. And not all women take long to get ready, and not all women smell nice. She obviously doesn't take public transit.

Inevitably, shoes were going to be on this list, and sure enough, #2, right above why we like having the toilet seat down (really, guys can't figure that out?) Why do women have so many shoes?

If you have a collection like this it's not
because you have capri pants and skirts.

The author first states that she can "wear the same brown Pumas all the damn time," which automatically tells me she probably has no right to be discussing shoe obsessions. Not all women are shoe whores, and that's fine. But I don't go around talking about cookware because I don't cook and I don't give a shit about pots and pans, so maybe someone who doesn't care about shoes shouldn't try to explain why women have so many pairs of shoes.

She chalks it up to the fact that the second we change our outfit, we have to change our shoes. Different outfits go with different shoes. That's true. But if you really love your dumb, brown Pumas, just buy stuff that goes with them, and have the obligatory generic brown and black dress shoes rotting in the back of your closet like a dude.

I have a veritable ass-ton of shoes, and it's got nothing to do with my clothes. I have shoes that don't even go with any clothes. They just sit in the closet and look pretty, rotting around and waiting for the day they'll be pulled out and paired with some random purchase that they were lucky enough to match.

We're not all the same, and it's stupid ass articles like this that try to explain away all our behavior, justify our quirks, and put us all into the same silly little box. I for one will not have it. Because if I'm going to do dumb things, it's going to be for no explicable reason, and the only box I'll ever be part of is an amazing shoebox of my choosing, and I will choose them because they're pretty, not because they match a hemline.